1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates broadly to outpatient medical monitoring systems. More particularly, this invention relates to outpatient medical communication systems for ambulatory home-care patients.
2. State of the Art
Current trends within managed health care mandate reducing the costs of the delivery of health care. The most costly method of delivering health care is care within a hospital facility. Therefore, there is a prevailing trend towards discharging patients sooner in order to reduce the cost of care, and to `treat` the patients with out-of-hospital or home-based health care. This trend toward home-based health care will continue to grow as greater cost constraints are implemented in order to manage health care at lower delivery costs.
A number of home-care systems are currently available which use basic monitoring technology. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,228,449 to Christ et al. discloses a one-way remote alarm system in which vital signs of a home care patient are monitored and an alarm signal is sent to a remote monitoring station in an emergency situation. U.S. Pat. No. 3,843,841 to Rubinstein discloses another health care system which automatically dials a telephone number and delivers a prerecorded message if a home residing patient fails to respond to a periodic signal. However, the above referenced systems other than generating an alarm signal in a presumed emergency situation provide no opportunity for a dialogue between the patient and the care provider. These types of systems are therefore inadequate for monitoring the general health of home care patients (i.e., reminding patients to monitor their vital signs and to self-administer medication, inquiring about medicament side-effects, monitoring the symptoms of disease, determining non-emergency care needs, and inquiring about the patient's perceived state of health) which might prevent emergency situations from occurring. In addition, systems which require a patient to remain in the vicinity of the alarm system do not meet the needs of ambulatory home-care patients.
More recently, the telemedicine trend has led to the production of more interactive devices which use costly computer screens and miniature television cameras with telephonic connections. These devices permit a greater degree of interactivity between the home-residing patient and a monitoring station than the `emergency` alarms. However, the cost of the equipment is large, thereby limiting the use of the equipment to a selected few recipients. In addition, like more basic monitoring systems, the systems are localized, requiring the patient to be near the computer screen to interact with the system. However, a large percentage of patients that are discharged and that need to be monitored (e.g., reminded to self-administer life critical medication), are quite ambulatory.